The proper treatment of egophoricity in Kathmandu Newari

We develop a theory of so-called 'conjunct-disjunct marking', also known as 'egophoricity', in Kathmandu Newari. The signature pattern of egophoricity looks a bit like person agreement: In declaratives, there is a special marker that goes on first person verbs, but not second or third person (e.g. 'I drank-EGO too much'). But in interrogatives, the same marker goes on second person (e.g. 'Did you-EGO drink too much?'). This is called interrogative flip. Egophoric marking also interacts interestingly with the presence of evidential markers, and comes with an implication of knowing self-reference (emphasized in Newari by a restriction to volitional action). Our paper discusses two previous approaches, which we label indexical and evidential, and motivate our account, which we label egophoric. Along the way, we develop a theory of how de se attitudes are communicated.http://eecoppock.info/egophoricity-oup.pdfAccepted manuscrip

Egophoric Attitudes and Questions in Kathmandu Newar

Kathmandu Newar (Sino-Tibetan) has an egophoric verb marking system: an egophoric (or conjunct) verb form co-occurs with first person in declaratives and second person in inter- rogatives. Egophoric marking is restricted to predicates of intentional action and also interacts with evidential markers. This paper examines the distribution of egophoric marking in reports of speech and attitudes, extending to this domain the analysis of egophoric marking as indicating self-ascription by the epistemic authority for the utterance. This distribution reveals that egophoric marking of a clause further introduces an implication that the epistemic authority believes the proposition denoted by the clause

Person-Marked Quantifiers in Kinyarwanda

Person agreement is usually restricted to verbal categories. However, Bantu languages permit person agreement on certain adnomial quantifiers. We propose an account of the evolution of person agreement that constrains the cliticization of pronomials to specifier-head relationships. This diachronic view captures the presencr of person agreement in Bantu on adnomial quantifiers as well as verbs

A Theory of Agreement and Disagreement

Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Phonetics and Phonological Universals (1998

Effect of multivitamin and multimineral supplementation on cognitive function in men and women aged 65 years and over : a randomised controlled trial

Background: Observational studies have frequently reported an association between cognitive function and nutrition in later life but randomised trials of B vitamins and antioxidant supplements have mostly found no beneficial effect. We examined the effect of daily supplementation with 11 vitamins and 5 minerals on cognitive function in older adults to assess the possibility that this could help to prevent cognitive decline. Methods: The study was carried out as part of a randomised double blind placebo controlled trial of micronutrient supplementation based in six primary care health centres in North East Scotland. 910 men and women aged 65 years and over living in the community were recruited and randomised: 456 to active treatment and 454 to placebo. The active treatment consisted of a single tablet containing eleven vitamins and five minerals in amounts ranging from 50–210 % of the UK Reference Nutrient Intake or matching placebo tablet taken daily for 12 months. Digit span forward and verbal fluency tests, which assess immediate memory and executive functioning respectively, were conducted at the start and end of the intervention period. Risk of micronutrient deficiency at baseline was assessed by a simple risk questionnaire. Results: For digit span forward there was no evidence of an effect of supplements in all participants or in sub-groups defined by age or risk of deficiency. For verbal fluency there was no evidence of a beneficial effect in the whole study population but there was weak evidence for a beneficial effect of supplementation in the two pre-specified subgroups: in those aged 75 years and over (n 290; mean difference between supplemented and placebo groups 2.8 (95% CI -0.6, 6.2) units) and in those at increased risk of micronutrient deficiency assessed by the risk questionnaire (n 260; mean difference between supplemented and placebo groups 2.5 (95% CI -1.0, 6.1) units). Conclusion: The results provide no evidence for a beneficial effect of daily multivitamin and multimineral supplements on these domains of cognitive function in community-living people over 65 years. However, the possibility of beneficial effects in older people and those at greater risk of nutritional deficiency deserves further attention.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Cosmogrid Simulation: Statistical Properties of Small Dark Matter Halos

We present the results of the "Cosmogrid" cosmological N-body simulation suites based on the concordance LCDM model. The Cosmogrid simulation was performed in a 30Mpc box with 2048^3 particles. The mass of each particle is 1.28x10^5 Msun, which is sufficient to resolve ultra-faint dwarfs. We found that the halo mass function shows good agreement with the Sheth & Tormen fitting function down to ~10^7 Msun. We have analyzed the spherically averaged density profiles of the three most massive halos which are of galaxy group size and contain at least 170 million particles. The slopes of these density profiles become shallower than -1 at the inner most radius. We also find a clear correlation of halo concentration with mass. The mass dependence of the concentration parameter cannot be expressed by a single power law, however a simple model based on the Press-Schechter theory proposed by Navarro et al. gives reasonable agreement with this dependence. The spin parameter does not show a correlation with the halo mass. The probability distribution functions for both concentration and spin are well fitted by the log-normal distribution for halos with the masses larger than ~10^8 Msun. The subhalo abundance depends on the halo mass. Galaxy-sized halos have 50% more subhalos than ~10^{11} Msun halos have.Comment: 15 pages, 18 figures, accepted by Ap

Sunyaev Zel'dovich Effect Observations of Strong Lensing Galaxy Clusters: Probing the Over-Concentration Problem

We have measured the Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) effect for a sample of ten strong lensing selected galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev Zel'dovich Array (SZA). The SZA is sensitive to structures on spatial scales of a few arcminutes, while the strong lensing mass modeling constrains the mass at small scales (typically < 30"). Combining the two provides information about the projected concentrations of the strong lensing clusters. The Einstein radii we measure are twice as large as expected given the masses inferred from SZ scaling relations. A Monte Carlo simulation indicates that a sample randomly drawn from the expected distribution would have a larger median Einstein radius than the observed clusters about 3% of the time. The implied overconcentration has been noted in previous studies with smaller samples of lensing clusters. It persists for this sample, with the caveat that this could result from a systematic effect such as if the gas fractions of the strong lensing clusters are substantially below what is expected.Comment: submitte